The IoT ecosystem is fragmented with various applications and devices in vertical domains, so IMPACT offers a horizontal platform to provide a way for the enterprise to manage IoT devices and applications. “Those vertical point solutions are not taking advantage of general best practice of common components in the middle,” he said.

“Nokia has a lot of experience in on-boarding and managing devices. You’ve got to think about devices in very generic terms. Smart phones and IP set-up boxes and gateways that are in your homes, or Wi-Fi access points, all of those devices are IP connected and often remotely managed. Nokia is doing this for approximately 1.5 billion devices around the globe today,” Ploumen said.

Video analytics: Powered by Nokia Bell Labs’ machine learning algorithms, IMPACT provides new functionality for a range of IoT applications by automatically detecting anomalies in video feeds in real time, such as traffic accidents, speeding vehicles, and unauthorized entry into secure locations, and triggering alerts for further action.

Smart parking application: Allows municipalities to better manage inventory, resulting in more efficient use of parking spaces, reduced traffic, and pollution; while also providing drivers with real-time information on parking space availability and streamlining payment processes.

In a smart city, analytics are particularly important, as tens of thousands of cameras can be located throughout a city but there aren’t enough employees to view all of the screens with the video feed. “What we wanted is to create a solution where software would automatically detect what is relevant to pay attention to. Existing solutions on the market for video analysis don’t do this. They read license plates or count the number of people that walk by a predetermined point,” he said.

Nokia is also working with cities to offer sensor feeds combined with video cameras to determine available parking spots.

The original version of IMPACT arrived on the market in June 2016. The updated version will be available in the second quarter of 2017.

As for what’s next, Ploumen said, “We’ve created this generic infrastructure and while it’s relevant and provides economies of scale at the end of the day people that purchase IoT solutions to solve IoT problems still need to solve a very targeted problem in the field. With smart cities for example, it’s one thing to say you should do a platform like IMPACT, but another thing to say I can solve your parking problem or your lighting solution. A platform alone is a key enabler but not enough. You need key applications.”

A year ago, Nokia identified five key verticals to focus on: Cities, public safety, e-health, automotive, and utilities.

“Nokia’s purchase of Withings was very much related to the fact that we want to be a vertical player in health, e-health devices that collect e-health data. Just an example of showing where Nokia is executing in its strategy to be relevant in these five verticals,” he said.